She said I'll make a difference
by Sons.of.David
Summary: A short story of one capitol-born character before we see him play his part in The Hunger Games.


We're in a dead zone. Or so we think. We're not worried about the crowds. No one recognizes faces in the Capitol. But cameras do.  
We wait for the signal. It's to be a truck of some description. One arrives. A commercial for naturally produced milk is on the side. The natural landscape manufactured on the side of the truck contrasts with the steel and glass buildings around it. It opens. No milk is inside it. It's the one. Piled with holographic pouches, metal handle-looking items that when held and activated, cause a three-dimensional hologram around the holder or above them. I just hope that whatever mine says is what I'm standing for.  
I walk casually towards it. On my own, I'm not suspicious – minimal make up, shirt, pants. A college student. Nothing. A college student running to a milk truck with no milk in it is more suspicious. I see others taking out its contents and walking off. I do the same. I remembered what the organizer of the protesters said, "If you're willing to die for this cause, go for it. If not, shut it down, walk away casually, drop the pouch somewhere. Walk home."  
Around the corner, the Justice Building, that's when the real action takes place. President Snow walks out. That's the cue. I'm hesitant, but I see other pouches set off. One by one, they light the streets with messages. I activate mine. It startles me, I've never used one before. I'm safe with this one. It's an overhead, the size of a billboard. No one can pinpoint it to me. But those next to me know it's not them.  
I look around me, trying to look stunned and curious, then I look up to the image my pouch caused.

A face with the twelve year old who was stabbed to death last Games, her funeral, her mourning parents, with the flashing words "Tributes are people too".

It's a cornier one, but something that I stand for. Some of them are just hateful, saying that if you live in the Capitol, you're born evil. One protestor has the words going around them like the red strips at the barber – "Stop the Games. Stop the Slaughter." He won't get away.

President Snow ignores them. He walks casually to the car waiting for him. The Peacekeepers come. Armoured, transparent shields, they round up suspects. I stand firm. My colleagues are wrestled to the ground. I stand still. It's worth dying for.

I hear their screams. I see them being tazered. Something in my feet gets me moving. Just walking. Looking scared, but I keep moving. I'm a part of the crowd now. Surely they know the hologram is following me? I look up and around. I turned it off. When did I do that?

I was ushered out with the other "innocent" civilians. They move on with their lives. They moan about the inconvenience, the dent the protest caused in their schedule, while some of my friends are ushered off to prison, some possibly death.

The pouch I wrap up in the paper that once held a souvlaki, casually dropping it into a sidewalk rubbish shoot. I reach my dorm, sit at my desk I didn't pay for. I put my head in my hands, and then start banging it onto the desk. None of it makes a difference, does it? I press the side wall and ask for my meal I didn't work for, lie on the bed I never earned.

I hate this prison. Sometimes, I feel like I'm in the Games, some sort of toy that despite the best intentions, becomes a tool like every other before them. I want to do something, change something. I want to show the people who enter the Arena that there are people who care, people in the Capitol who are sad that they die. But what can I do? I'm a fashion student! What can I do, _sew_ things better? _Hem_ people to freedom?  
I turn on the TV. No mention of the protest. Of course, we wouldn't want people with half a sympathy for the Tributes to know that there are others who feel the same. I watch many revolutionary discoveries on looking younger, how to eat more, and the effects of hair colour on different body shapes. Who's divorcing who, who's on holidays and how much you want to be there. There is nothing of substance.

The door knocks. I want to throw something at it. I say "what" instead. It keeps knocking. Now is not a good time. I get up and open it.  
"I'm not in a lab mood" I say to the woman on the other side. She's a mature-age student, previously did a degree in science and a diploma in holographic. What she's doing in fashion eludes me, but she's a good friend. I sit back down on the bed. She comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"What's getting you down?" she has a very high voice, definitely from the Capitol. I don't answer.

"Listen", she continues, "you're great. You're nothing like anything the fashion world has seen. You're brilliant. You're going to make your mark on the fashion world -" I interrupt with anger, "I don't want to make a mark on the f-, no, not on the fashion world. I don't want to be working for the drones that follow fashion. I want to make a difference." She sits next to me, looks me in the eye.  
"Trust me, Cinna," she says, "you will."


End file.
